By Kathryn Roth-Douquet '86
My children only know wartime. They are among
nearly 900,000 children in this country who have
kissed goodbye a parent bound for Iraq or
Afghanistan. My husband is serving his third combat
deployment wiht the Marine Corps. Several times a week, they
Skype with their daddy in his concrete barracks, wearing his
regulation green sweats.
"I wish there was no such thing as Daddy-sickness," my
8-year-old said recently. I sometimes think his absence is even
harder for me. I wasn't raised inured to war, and its coming in
2003 was a tremendous shock. To this day I mind terribly
being separated from my partner, my yang.
The force is all volunteer, so of course we are free to go. Yet
we stay, in order to take part in a "cause greater than self," as
John McCain famously said. A lot of my adult life has been
spent in some form of public service, much of it politicallyrelated,
including working in President Clinton's White
House. Somewhere during that period, I came to realize that
public service wasn't just doing what I wanted to do at the
moment, but also moving forward with democratic action. It
meant allowing our constitutional mechanisms to forge a
unity out of 300 million cantankerous and disagreeable and
self-regarding souls so that we collectively could make policy
and act as a nation. When my family takes part in the military
service of our country, we throw our lot in with those flawed
actors that nevertheless make up the best system of
government I know of.
While working in government, I came to realize that what
our military does in the world is enormously varied, and
incredibly consequential. When the United States sends
people to action around the world, whether it be
humanitarian or stabilization or counterinsurgency, it matters
who we send and how well they do their job. Another aspect
of being part of "a cause greater than self" is that it lets our
family live in an unusual community of goodwill, unusual at
least compared to how I've lived outside the military. Because
my neighbors and I are all very much in the same boat, we
take care of each other and each other's kids constantly. The
children live in a throwback to childhoods of 40 years ago,
where they roam from yard to yard for hours every day,
involved in spontaneous multi-age imaginative play and
pickup sports games, tree climbing and hole-digging and
marsh-exploring. In an odd way, it can feel like a very
protected way to live.
And yet, sometimes I am absolutely ready to pack it up. I
was wondering why we keep at it recently as the kids and I
returned from visiting my husband on his mid-year, two-week
R&R leave. That's how much we get to see him in the course
of a year, two weeks. As we walked through U.S. airports en
route home, the remoteness of this war for most Americans was
palpable to me. Only about 1 percent have fought in it or are
in the immediate family of someone who has. Never before,
says Mike O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institute, have so few
done so much for so long. One of my friends said to me, "Yes,
Afghanistan and Iraq have become like Korea, the forgotten
war." My reaction to that is, "Okay then, I'll forget it, too." After
all, what creates that sense of goodwill for those of us who
serve is the idea that we are actually serving the country. If the
country seems ambivalent, confused, or disinterested, it's hard
to feel terribly interested ourselves. We may not be able to
change that—to create a sophisticated or engaged sense of the
operations we send our military on, but we can perhaps find
common ground in an appreciation for service.
I work with an organization called Blue Star Families,
whose goal is strengthening and supporting military families,
and building partnerships with communities and organizations
outside the military to create a better sense of support. We
conducted a survey last year, and its major finding was that 94
percent of military families reported they do not believe that
the larger community truly understands or appreciates the
sacrifices they make for the country. I think people do in fact
care, but don't know what to do. I hope Blue Star Families can
help change that.
We are working with non-profit organizations and the
government to develop programs such as a community
blueprint for cities to help them interact with and support the
military families and veterans in their environs. We have a
number of programs under the rubric Operation Appreciation
to help those in the larger community reach out to support
military families. This includes a letter writing program for
folks to send letters to a military spouse, child or parent of a
deployed service member, thanking them for their service. An
optional "honor card" goes along with that. On the card, which
reads, "In honor of your service to the country, I am inspired to
do the following community service…," writers can fill in the
service of their choice—mentoring a youth, planting a garden,
cleaning up a park. Believe me, that's a great card to receive.
This commitment to service and to others is the kind of gesture
that can bring cheer—and the ability to hang on—to us all.
Kathryn Roth-Douquet '86 is a writer, lawyer, political activist and
Marine Corps wife. She is the co-author, with Frank Schaeffer, of How
Free People Move Mountains, and AWOL: The Unexcused Absence
of America's Upper Classes from the Military and How it Hurts
Our Country. She is a veteran of every presidential campaign of the
past 25 years, was an advisor to the Obama campaign, and has served in
the Clinton White House and the Department of Defense.
Want to share an informed opinion? Submit to jtremble@brynmawr.edu